The Golden Compass (film) - Differences From The Novel

Differences From The Novel

Numerous scenes from the novel were not featured in the film or were markedly changed. On December 7, 2007, New York Magazine reviewed draft scripts from both Stoppard and Weitz; both were significantly longer than the final version, and Weitz's draft (which, unlike Stoppard's, did not feature significant additions to the source material) was pronounced the best of the three. The magazine concluded that instead of a "likely three hours of running time" that included such scenes as Mrs. Coulter's London party and Lyra's meeting with a witch representative, the studio had opted for a "failed" length of under two hours in order to maximise revenue.

On October 9, 2007, Weitz revealed that the final three chapters from Northern Lights had been moved to the film's potential sequel, The Subtle Knife, in order to provide "the most promising conclusion to the first film and the best possible beginning to the second", though he also said less than a month later that there had been "tremendous marketing pressure" to create "an upbeat ending". (The San Francisco Chronicle found this "truncated" ending abrupt.) Author Pullman publicly supported these changes, saying that "every film has to make changes to the story that the original book tells — not to change the outcome, but to make it fit the dimensions and the medium of film." In addition to removing the novel's unsettling ending, the film reverses the order in which Lyra travels to Bolvangar, the Gobbler's outpost, and then Svalbard, the armoured bears' kingdom. (Neither deviation from the book features in Scholastic Publishing's The Golden Compass: The Story of the Movie novelization.) In July 2009, Weitz told a Comic Con audience that the film had been "recut by, and my experience with it ended being quite a terrible one”; he also told Time.com that he had felt that by "being faithful to the book I was working at odds with the studio."

In the book the Jordan College Master reluctantly poisons Lord Asriel's wine; in the film this action is undertaken more willingly by a visiting Magisterium official. Also, throughout the film, the novel's "alethiometer" is referred to merely as the "golden compass."

Tasha Robinson of The A.V. Club argued that through the use of a spoken introduction and other exposition-filled dialogue, the film fails by "baldly revealing up front everything that the novel is trying to get you to wonder about and to explore slowly." Youyoung Lee wrote in a December 2007 Entertainment Weekly that the film "leaves out the gore," such as the book's ritualistic heart-eating that concludes the bear fight, "to create family-friendlier fare." Lee also said that the film "downplays the Magisterium's religious nature", but Robinson argued that the depiction of the Church in the film is as "a hierarchical organization of formally robed, iconography-heavy priests who dictate and define morality for their followers, are based out of cathedrals, and decry teachings counter to theirs as 'heresy.'...doing ugly things to children under cover of secrecy." Robinson rhetorically then asks, "Who are most people going to think of besides the Catholic Church?" The film does show more prominently scenes from the perspective of Magisterium officials than the novel. The novel never explicitly mentions the Magisterium's intentions except through the rumours and gossip of others, and through comments made by the character of Mrs. Coulter.

Series creator Philip Pullman suggested a scene not included in the books, in which Mrs. Coulter hits her dæmon. Although the character has black hair in the novel, Pullman responded to the blonde Kidman's portrayal by saying "I was clearly wrong. You sometimes are wrong about your characters. She's blonde. She has to be."